


you can feel it in the silence

by aquamarine_nebula



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Ableism (from Ed's family), Autistic Edward Keystone, Developing Relationship, M/M, Past Child Abuse, it's uh...fluffier than it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26431108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquamarine_nebula/pseuds/aquamarine_nebula
Summary: It calmed Ed to sort things.Particularly when the world was...loud. When the battering sand against the walls of the house was unending. He could never switch it off, see. It was always there, even as everyone else could barely hear it.
Relationships: Albert Einstein/Edward Keystone
Comments: 13
Kudos: 28





	you can feel it in the silence

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to jenn for the title u the real mvp

It calmed Ed to sort things.

Particularly when the world was...loud. When the battering sand against the walls of the house was unending. He could never switch it  _ off _ , see. It was always  _ there _ , even as everyone else could barely hear it.

He sent Albert a look, tapping his finger against the table. They’d come up with some sort of language the week before, when it had been harder to pull Albert from one of his panicky moods. Tapping once meant  _ ‘I’m fine’ _ , tapping twice meant ‘ _ help _ ’. Better than  _ asking _ outright when the al-Tahans were nearby or when the words were sticking in his chest.

Ed tapped twice, and when Albert met his eyes he shifted his head to gesture at the window.

There was a bowl of marbles on the mantelpiece, belonging to one of the twins, and Albert fetched it without a word to place it closer to Ed. Different colours, different shapes, different sizes. Something to focus his mind on, rather than the battering of the sand that felt like a ram against his brain.

Albert’s hands carded through his hair for just a moment, gentle against his scalp, and Ed willed the blush that coated his face to go away. He filed it away for now, placing the marbles in piles of colours as the twins bounded forward to watch him. Maybe Albert would be happy to play with his hair at some point, but probably not now, when he needed his hands for the letters he was writing. Maybe not ever, if he didn’t feel the same way Ed did.

Ishaq clambered onto his lap to watch closer, and Ed happily pushed any thought of doomed love, or  _ whatever _ , out of his mind, and definitely did not think about how Albert was watching him with a small smile as he played with the twins.

-

The language itself had developed from embarrassment, mostly. Ed didn’t want the al-Tahans to realise what his family had years before, still jolted awake from half-conscious memories of his father slapping his across the face when he stumbled over his school work, his siblings’ derisive comments and laughter when he couldn’t make things stick in his mind, the tutors who quit in exasperation when he didn’t respond to their standard method of ‘read, write, repeat’.

Thing was, he was far from the idiot his parents believed him to be. Albert had taken to teaching him bits of German, and within a month they were holding a fairly fluent conversation. He got lost in his monologuing on the beauty of certain fractal patterns that were only visible in the wormholes he created when teleporting, and after only one description Ed had managed to sketch out good approximations of the patterns. These skills just weren’t... _ useful _ , according to his family. There was no need to learn anything other than English and French--because everyone important spoke one of the two, apparently. Being an artist? Pointless. Art was pointless.

Ed remembered that conversation very clearly. His father had a signet ring on his thumb, which dug painfully into his arm when it was being gripped. He’d had a pencil wrenched out of his hand, with which he’d been sketching a portrait of one of the family dogs. The dog’s single eye had stared at him sadly from the paper, the ear cut through with a deep indentation from when his father had jerked his arm away. Thing was, there was a portrait of his father with that very same dog on the wall behind him.

He didn’t have the words for it at the time, but he felt the hypocrisy.

For Albert, it had developed from tapping on the door which separated their two bedrooms. His mind was loud when he was alone. Apparently he’d lost so much when he was in Newton’s office that he could feel the black hole in his mind, unable to make his way through it. Two taps on the wood of the door, and Ed scrambled out of bed to open it.

He always brought his own pillow, though he never ended up staying the night. Instead they would sit on the outrageously soft carpet, paying cards and talking in a mixture of languages. Ed had thought the first time had been special, Albert finally letting Ed into the darker corners of his life, but, frankly, every time was special. There was something gentle about Albert in those moments, rather than the manic energy he showed during the day. His hair was always even more mussed than usual, probably from tossing and turning before giving in and joining Ed.

“One to ten?” Ed asked that night, when the two taps were a little more frantic than usual.

“Eight? I think. Eight or nine.”

Ed pulled him in wordlessly and sat beside him on the floor. He waited.  _ That _ was a rating of anxiety, to gauge how bad he felt in as few words as possible. 

“I know...if I remembered things, I could help more. I’m dead weight, you know?” Ed shook his head, but said nothing. Too scared to say something wrong.

Ed used it not long after. Another dream, another wave of pain that echoed for years down to his bones. He didn’t understand, really, why what should have been his rock and his solace became so antagonistic. Not everyone had families who hated them; why was he any different?

Two taps on the door, and Albert opened it within seconds. “Did I wake you?” he asked, and Albert shook his head.

If it was another time, he would have worried about that, comparing the exhaustion in his eyes to what it should be. But right now all he could hear was the  _ thwak _ of a birch stick against his palm blooming red. The marks had long-since gone, but the palm burned at the recollection.

“Can I sleep here?”

Albert blushed a little, but stepped aside to let him in. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He’d managed to keep most of his childhood from Albert, explaining his reticence as ‘ _ my life only started with my connection to Apollo, really _ ’ and wasn’t it the worst pain imaginable that even that he owed to his family? “I don’t really have the words for it,” he mumbled, half hoping that it was too quiet for Albert to hear. 

It wasn’t, but he didn’t comment, instead pushing Ed gently to the bed and climbing in beside him.

It was probably...not one of his better ideas. It was bad enough when Albert was behind a door, but now he could feel the dip of the mattress, warm breath on the back of his neck from how close he was. Expectation was hanging heavy in the air, but Ed had no idea if he was the only one who felt the heady weight.

A small hand patted his shoulder. “You’re really tense,” Albert said.

“Uh… bad dream,” Ed explained. It only took that for the memory to flood back, and he clenched his right hand.

Albert propped himself up on his elbow. “Can I do something to help?” he asked, pulling gently on a strand of his hair.

“You could...could you stroke my hair?” There was a pause as embarrassment flooded him--if Albert didn’t know about his  _ stupid _ ,  _ unatainable _ crush he certainly would now. “Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s stupid, I know--”

Albert shushed him gently, and started stroking his hair, carefully working through a few knots so it glided through his fingers with no resistance. Ed stayed as still as he could, but melted against the mattress when nails scratched against his scalp. “Okay?” Albert asked.

“Yes,” Ed replied, half-muffled by the ridiculously downy pillow.

No-one had  _ ever _ touched him with so much softness. Not...as if he were breakable, per se, but kind. Any request for kindness from his family had always been met with the clear opposite. And the same pattern had continued for  _ years _ , from the paladin he trained under when he first arrived at the temple, to Tjelvar’s constant annoyance with him.

A sob wracked its way up his throat, and he clapped his hands to his mouth to try to force it back.

“Ed?” Albert asked, alarmed. 

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...make you uncomfortable, or anything, I just--”

Albert tutted under his breath, stroking his hair a little harder and shuffling closer to swing a leg over his hips. “You’re not making me  _ uncomfortable _ ,” he insisted.

Ed sank back against Albert’s chest, and thought of nothing but his hands carding through his hair.

-

A rare clear day. No storm, no wind blustering and no sand pounding rhythms that felt like glass against his mind. Casting endure elements on the two of them was simple, so the blistering heat was only a gentle warmth, and sitting on the burning sand was comfortable. The al-Tahans were happy to allow them to borrow one of their extensive collection of camels, and he was currently happily resting beside them, head lowered as he dozed.

The sunset when perched precariously on a dune was something spectacular, dramatic shadows and blinding orange. Albert talked about the refraction of light through ozone, and a recent experiment that undid everything scientists thought they knew about light and what it meant for teleportation.

Ed just watched, feeling calm and at peace for the first time in a long time.

Sunlight helped; the heat on his skin reaffirmed his connection to Apollo, as if Apollo was embracing him, giving him a place where he belonged.

He’d noticed, too, that he shone a bit more when he was around Albert. Maybe it was happiness, but maybe it was Apollo’s way to say that he approved, that this man would only deepen his faith. He’d started to have an idea that Albert wasn’t completely out of his reach, too, a softness in his eyes, a smile in his voice that  _ wasn’t _ merely laughter at stupid mistakes.

Albert leant against his shoulder, and Ed short-circuited. It was entirely innocuous; they’d shared a bed, spent most waking moments together, this  _ shouldn’t be a big deal _ . Then Albert slid his hand into Ed’s.

“Y-you...did you…? I mean, it’s...uh…” Albert looked at him with a furrowed brow. “This is okay?” he finally managed to get out without stuttering. 

Albert didn’t look away. His eyes really were pretty, a light brown which turned amber in the light of the sun. “Is it okay for you?”

Ed laughed a little at that. “Yes, it really is.”

Albert smiled, turning back to the sunset.

This moment was probably the most perfect he’d get. As much as he cared about the al-Tahans, particularly the kids, living with them wasn’t ideal. Here, all they had watching them was a camel who probably didn’t care what they did as long as they brought him home at one point.

“You can say no,” Ed prefaced, “but can I kiss you?”

Albert looked at him again, blank with shock. “ _ You _ ...want to kiss  _ me _ ?” he asked.

Ed dropped his hand, colouring with shame as his stomach dropped like a stone to his feet. “N-no, you’re right. I don’t know what I was--listen, I  _ know _ I’m not  _ you _ , but--”

“Wait,  _ wait _ , Ed, that’s not what I meant.” He shook his head and switched to German. “It’s just, you’re the  _ kindest _ and most sincere person I’ve ever met, you--you see the good in everyone, you know? And I  _ want _ to be with you but you don’t have to feel like you--like you should or whatever. You don’t have to protect my feelings.”

“That’s not why I asked?”

“Oh.” He paused, and then his eyes widened to the size of saucers. “ _ Oh _ . Right. You...you want to be with me too?”

“Yes?”

“Oh.” He slowly took Ed’s hand again. “I wasn’t expecting that. Since when?”

“I… honestly don’t know when it started. Probably...the first week we were with the al-Tahans, you didn’t treat me any differently when I…” he trailed off. When he’d had to shove down his panic at the unending rattle of the window panes in a storm. He’d been so stuck in his head, then, unable to force any words to his mouth. Cowering in the back of his mind, even though he was far from a coward.

Maybe the storm had reminded him just that bit too much of Rome.

But Albert had noticed, somehow. Most people didn’t, or expected it from him and found it amusing, but Albert had easily brought the twins’ attention to him and amused them by teleporting around the al-Tahan mansion. By the time Ed had felt marginally better, they were already exhausted and quietly lounging on a fainting couch.

Albert pressed their foreheads together, reaching up to cup his cheek, and Ed finally closed the distance, pressing a swift kiss to his mouth. Testing the waters, mostly, in case Albert changed his mind. 

Albert grinned, before pulling him back into a deeper kiss that knocked the breath out of him. 


End file.
